


midnight love

by Catsarecutebutaliens



Series: trauma blues [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, Nightmares, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, emotional angst, it's river and the doctor, references to trauma, y'know how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23680834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsarecutebutaliens/pseuds/Catsarecutebutaliens
Summary: River welcomes the Doctor into her arms, unaware of what happened on Gallifrey, but some long-repressed feelings and thoughts start creeping up on her. While she holds the Doctor in her sleep, keeping her safe from her nightmares, seeds of doubt begin to grow.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Series: trauma blues [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1712221
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82





	midnight love

**Author's Note:**

> So, girl in red released a new song (which you can find here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9256X67IQdQ) and I got major River/Doctor vibes from it, causing this to be produced late at night. I polished and finished it this morning and hope you can enjoy it! Some angst, some fluff, some cuddling - basically, a bit of everything.

There were moments filled with heat and adrenaline, hours spent running or fleeing or loving each other until sunrise, that flooded her body and mind until she was high on the ecstasy the Doctor brought with her no matter where she went. It was never cheap, never just second-best but the kind of feeling that left you breathless and hurting with laughter and joy and aching for just one more trip, one more time. 

Anything to be with her.

River loved those moments, she craved them, lived off them, wrote them down to never forget a single second of them, but they always came with a prize.

She forgot about it or pushed it to the side whenever she spotted the telling TARDIS blue around a corner or heard her breaks groaning and wheezing through time and space. The moment the Doctor takes your hand, you are willing to do anything to stay in this moment forever.

No-one ever does, though, and in the end, everyone pays their prize for their time with her.

Some lose their memory, forgetting every single moment of finally feeling alive, while others are forced into a world too strange to be truly theirs or are left behind to deal with the aftermath of the Doctor's actions.

Nothing is ever easy, and they continue to live (if they do stay alive long enough) with an ache in their heart, yearning for more and simultaneously wishing they had never met her in the first place. 

What it came down to was a simple question, but the answer was everything but simple: Was it worth it? The pain, the adventures, seeing the stars, the endless joy and destruction, and the Doctor's scattered lives throughout the universe?

Sometimes, River wasn't sure what her answer would be when the time came to say goodbye.

Right now, though, with silk strands of blonde hair running through her fingers and a warm body laying on top of hers, legs tangled with each other, there was no heat or ecstasy, just pure, sparkling bliss spreading in her chest, suffocating her in the best way possible.

If the sun could shine through the library's windows, River imagined it would be golden beams of light slowly turning purple, catching the dust dancing around the room and lighting the Doctor's hair on fire. It had been a while since she had been able to spend enough time on a planet to watch the evening sun settle behind the horizon and she was starting to desperately miss those lit-up moments of peace. 

Darilium's sunset had been wonderful, but after living in the twilight for a year, with about twenty in the dark stretching ahead of her, she was yearning for a normal, terrestrial day-night-cycle, if just for twenty-four hours.

The Doctor shifted against her, head buried in her chest, and a small, almost distressed noise escaped her throat. Lowering the book she was holding, River ran her hand down the back of her head and the upper part of her back. She let out an expectedly soothing shh sound and hoped the Doctor would continue to stay asleep.

When she had arrived on Darilium a week ago, River had been pleasantly surprised and jumped at the chance to spend time with her future wife, pushing the consequences of interfering with their timelines like that to very back of her mind, just like she always did. There was a frantic spark in the Doctor's eyes, a tension in her posture that had reminded her more of a caged animal than her spouse, but at that moment, it had not been of importance. 

How could it have been, with urgent hands in her hair, and, later, new, exciting planets right in front of their doorstep?

With every passing hour, the Doctor's hands got more and more urgent, her smile turning into a grimace and the energy in her body pulling her so tight River was afraid she was going to snap. Something was wrong, something had happened, and River was unable to help her because she didn't talk, didn't sleep, didn't  _ stop running  _ for one moment.

So when the Doctor eventually involuntarily passed out, the book she was reading slowly sliding from her weakening grasp, River simply pulled her closer and tried her best to keep her asleep for as long as possible.

A few hours had gone by since then, and while she was occasionally reading to keep her mind occupied, most of them had been spent observing and thinking.

She was quiet now, quieter than River had ever seen her in all their years together, and with the tautness in her body released her features seemed almost innocent. Some soft wrinkles surrounded her eyes and mouth, which was ever so slightly open, and the way she subconsciously nuzzled her head into River's chest let a new kind of joy bloom within it.

There were still so many questions dancing in her mind, why now, why  _ her _ , and with them came the feeling she had been trying to repress for a long time.

To her, the Doctor was a flaming sun, a blinding sunset, the freedom of standing on top of a mountain and seeing the world laid out beneath you while the blowing wind almost convinces you you can fly.

But was she the same thing to her?

She was River's life, the most important person in her existence, but the Doctor did not need her back, never had, and it hurt, knowing she was just one of many faces in her indefinite life.

Not quite a consolation prize, but close enough to it. Second best, maybe, or simply the one person the Doctor ran to whenever she needed comforting. Thinking about it pained her, so she didn't, but they both knew her ending was coming closer; since dying with regrets had never been part of the plan, she forced herself through her mind's haze to find the clearance she craved.

Her stream of consciousness was interrupted by the Doctor once again moving in her sleep, her arms moving to hold onto River's waist, nails digging through the fabric of her shirt. Agitated sounds left her lip and River could feel her almost thrashing movements against her torso.

The tension she had been happy to see gone was back, evident in the violent set of her jaw and the frown on her face, eyes darting from side to side beneath closed lids. 

Nightmares weren't unusual for either of them, but this seemed different somehow, in a way River couldn't quite grasp. She set down her book and gently started moving both hands up and down her back, occasionally whispering soothing words into her hair. 

_ You're safe, I'm here, nothing can hurt you. _

It didn't matter whether the Doctor loved her back in the same way or if she also looked at her and saw starlight. It didn't matter whether they shared the warmth in their chests for each other or if this was all she needed: to be held and kept safe by someone long enough to find escape in the sweet arms of sleep.

River was going to be there for all of it until the Doctor decided it was enough.

With both arms around her, River kept calming her until her body stilled again, once more exhausted enough by itself to keep dreaming of untold horrors just to find a resemblance of peace.

Maybe she was going to die with unspoken regrets on her tongue, maybe one day she would see a mirror of her feelings in the Doctor and find the contentment she had been chasing for decades.

Maybe, one distant, distant day, she was going to decide none of this had been worth it and she would be left picking up the pieces of herself the Doctor had broken, but a small, whispering voice in the back of her head told her she was not going to be alive long enough to see herself being shattered by the person she loved most.


End file.
